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	"created_at": "2026-04-06T03:35:49.592327Z",
	"updated_at": "2026-04-10T13:11:40.075621Z",
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	"title": "Polish investigators seize Pegasus spyware systems as part of probe into alleged abuse",
	"llm_title": "",
	"authors": "",
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	"plain_text": "Polish investigators seize Pegasus spyware systems as part of probe\r\ninto alleged abuse\r\nBy Suzanne Smalley\r\nPublished: 2024-06-21 · Archived: 2026-04-06 03:14:05 UTC\r\nPolish prosecutors have seized Pegasus spyware systems from a government agency in Warsaw and are now\r\nstudying them to “determine the functionality of the Pegasus software and the broad legality of its use,” a\r\nspokesperson for the National Prosecutor’s Office said Friday according to local news reports.\r\nThe prosecutor’s office inspected and secured devices related to the powerful commercial surveillance tool at the\r\nheadquarters of the Central Anticorruption Bureau on Tuesday and Wednesday, the spokesperson said. \r\nThe operation is part of a national scandal in which the previous Polish government is accused of widely abusing\r\nPegasus to spy on opposition politicians.  \r\nInvestigators also took documents from the Central Anticorruption Bureau, the Internal Security Agency, the\r\nMilitary Counterintelligence Service and the Police “regarding the purchase of Pegasus software, its functionality\r\nand use as part of operational inspections,\" the spokesperson said.\r\n\"The obtained data was transferred to the Forensic Research Office of the Internal Security Agency, which was\r\nappointed to issue an opinion on the operation and functionality of the Pegasus system,\" he added.\r\nThe National Prosecutor’s announced in March that it had begun a probe examining the prior majority’s use of\r\nPegasus from November 2017 to December 2022.\r\nInvestigators are now focused in part on who purchased Pegasus for the Polish authorities.\r\nFormer Deputy Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński; former Deputy Minister of Justice Michał Woś; former\r\ndirector of the Department of Family and Juvenile Affairs at the Ministry of Justice Mikołaj Pawlak; and other\r\nMinistry of Justice employees have testified so far, according to local news reports.\r\nPegasus is manufactured by an Israeli company known as the NSO Group and has been increasingly showing up\r\non the phones of civil-society figures in countries as far flung as Spain, Poland, Rwanda, Hungary, Mexico,\r\nThailand and Latvia. \r\nIn April, Poland’s justice minister announced that nearly 600 people there, mostly opposition politicians and their\r\nallies, were targeted for surveillance with Pegasus under the former ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party.\r\nDespite abuses such as those surfacing in Poland, NSO Group has defended the use of Pegasus on phones\r\nbelonging to opposition “political operatives.”\r\nResponding to Friday’s news, John Scott-Railton, a senior digital forensics researcher at The Citizen Lab, which\r\nhelped uncover the abuse of Pegasus in Poland, tweeted: “Win for transparency in Poland. Nightmare for NSO\r\nhttps://therecord.media/poland-seizure-pegasus-spyware-systems\r\nPage 1 of 3\n\nGroup.”\r\nIn September, Poland's Senate unveiled findings from a special commission’s investigation into the use of Pegasus\r\nto hack an opposition politician in 2019, saying the incident involved \"gross violations of constitutional\r\nstandards.”\r\nThe commission said it had notified prosecutors there of the potential for criminal charges against current and\r\nformer Polish ministers who have been implicated in the use of the spyware.\r\nThe investigation, which ran across 18 months, also determined that the 2019 elections involving hacked\r\nopposition leader Senator Krzysztof Brejza were unfair due to use of the spyware.\r\n“Pegasus is not an operational tool used by the services, but it is a cyber weapon, i.e. a tool to influence the\r\nbehavior of other people,” Pegasus Surveillance Committee Chairman Marcin Bosacki said according to a\r\nsummary report. “We can unequivocally state that Pegasus was used in Poland to an extremely aggressive\r\ndegree.” \r\nSuzanne Smalley\r\nhttps://therecord.media/poland-seizure-pegasus-spyware-systems\r\nPage 2 of 3\n\nis a reporter covering digital privacy, surveillance technologies and cybersecurity policy for The Record. She was\r\npreviously a cybersecurity reporter at CyberScoop. Earlier in her career Suzanne covered the Boston Police\r\nDepartment for the Boston Globe and two presidential campaign cycles for Newsweek. She lives in Washington\r\nwith her husband and three children.\r\nSource: https://therecord.media/poland-seizure-pegasus-spyware-systems\r\nhttps://therecord.media/poland-seizure-pegasus-spyware-systems\r\nPage 3 of 3",
	"extraction_quality": 1,
	"language": "EN",
	"sources": [
		"ETDA"
	],
	"origins": [
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	],
	"references": [
		"https://therecord.media/poland-seizure-pegasus-spyware-systems"
	],
	"report_names": [
		"poland-seizure-pegasus-spyware-systems"
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